Pikes Lane Primary School

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 7 January 2025

Pupils are polite and well mannered. They treat each other and adults with kindness and respect. Pupils celebrate the diversity that exists within the school and wider community. They feel safe and are confident that staff will help them if they have any worries or concerns. The school is a place of calm where pupils meet the high expectations that staff set for their behaviour. Routines are well established from the moment that children arrive in the pre-school setting. Pupils understand the school rules. They support and remind each other to follow these. This results in the school being a place where pupils can be happy and can learn. The school motto of 'Together we can be the best' is the golden thread that runs through all that pupils do. The school has prioritised the development of the curriculum. It is aspirational and determined that all pupils will learn well and be successful. The school's actions are beginning to make a difference in some subjects. However, pupils do not build their knowledge well enough across the whole curriculum, including in the early years. This is borne out in the published results for the end of key stage 2, which show that many pupils are not well prepared for the next stage of their education.

What the school should improve

• In some subjects, and in parts of the early years curriculum, the school has not clearly identified the important knowledge that pupils need to know or the order in which it will be taught. This prevents pupils from building their knowledge securely over time in these subjects. The school should ensure that the curriculum is well designed so that pupils learn all that they should and achieve well across the curriculum.
• The checks that the school makes on pupils' learning do not identify gaps in knowledge sufficiently well. This means that some pupils move through the curriculum with ongoing misconceptions. The school should ensure that teachers are equipped to use assessment strategies well so that pupils' learning is secure before they are introduced to new concepts.
• Some pupils do not master accurate letter formation by the time they leave Year 2. This hinders their writing fluency as they move through the key stage 2 curriculum. The school should ensure that children in the early years gain the fundamental knowledge that they need to form letters, so that pupils have the skills that they need to be successful writers by the end of key stage 1.
• Governors do not evaluate the school's curriculum well enough. Therefore, they do not challenge the school as effectively as they should. Governors should use information that they gather about the curriculum to challenge the school appropriately. In this way, they can fully support the school's actions to improve the quality of education for pupils.

Read the full Ofsted report (opens in a new tab)